Low-carbon society: an enhanced modelling tool for the transition to sustainability

ended

The overall objective of LOCOMOTION is to enhance existing Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) in order to provide policy makers and relevant stakeholders with a reliable and practical model system to assess the feasibility, effectiveness, costs and impacts of different sustainability policy options, and to identify the most effective transition pathways towards a low-carbon society. Building on existing IAMs developed in the MEDEAS European project, and including knowledge from other relevant models (World6, TIMES, LEAP, GCAM, C-Roads, …), a number of substantive improvements are foreseen with respect to the state-of-the-art in energy-economy-environment modelling: • Expanding the geographical coverage and detail by creating a new worldwide multi-regional model with 7 global regions and integrating the 28 EU countries. • Improving IAMs by increasing the detail and precision of existing modules and adding new ones. • Integrating relevant functionalities from other models and comparing modelling results. • Integrating demand management policies in scenario assessment. • Representing and quantifying uncertainty. • Improving the usability of the IAMs through the development of two interface levels (professional and educational). • Exploiting and disseminating model result to three stakeholder groups: policy-makers and experts on strategic planning; experts on IAMs, modellers and programmers; and civil society. The improved IAM will be the product of an interdisciplinary work in data management, policy and scenario assessment and system dynamic modelling of relevant environmental, economic, social, technological and biophysical variables. This new IAM will be a robust, usable and reliable tool of diagnostic and scenario assessment for a sustainable transition towards a low-carbon society. LOCOMOTION will provide the different stakeholders with a more effective, user-friendly and open-source, model system for decision-support, education and social awareness.